Anzures: The Mexico City Neighborhood Tourists Never Find
When we chose where to open Casa Caravana, everyone said Polanco or Condesa. Those are the neighborhoods tourists know, the ones that show up in search results, the ones with name recognition. "You'll get more bookings," they told us. "People won't know where Anzures is."
We chose Anzures anyway. And three years and 195+ guests later, I can tell you it was the best decision we made — not just for the business, but for the kind of experience we wanted to offer. Because Anzures isn't just a good neighborhood. It's the kind of neighborhood that changes the way you experience a city.
A Brief History of This Place
Anzures takes its name from Pedro de Anzures Enríquez de Campo Redondo, a Spanish conquistador who was granted land in this area in the 16th century. But the neighborhood as it exists today was developed in the 1940s and 1950s, when Mexico City was expanding westward from its historic center. The streets were laid out in a grid pattern, the lots were generous, and the architecture reflected the mid-century confidence of a city that believed in its own future.
Many of the original houses still stand — two and three-story buildings with stone facades, wrought-iron balconies, and gardens that have had seventy years to grow wild and beautiful. Interspersed among them are newer buildings, some thoughtfully renovated (ours among them, I hope), others less so. But the neighborhood's character endures because the bones are so good: wide sidewalks, mature trees on every block, and a scale that feels human rather than monumental.
The streets are named after European intellectuals and scientists — Descartes, Leibnitz, Euler, Kepler. I've always loved this. There's something quietly aspirational about living on a street named after a philosopher.
What It Feels Like to Walk Here
Let me describe my morning, because I think it says more about Anzures than any list of attractions could.
I leave the house around 7:30. The street is quiet — not dead, but calm. A woman walks her dog past the jacaranda trees. A man in a suit waits for his ride. The bakery on the corner has its door open, and the smell of fresh bread reaches the sidewalk before I'm halfway there. I go in, order my concha and a café de olla, and sit on the bench outside for ten minutes watching the neighborhood wake up.
Then I walk to the market. It's small — maybe thirty stalls — but everything is fresh and absurdly cheap. I buy avocados, tomatoes, limes, and a bunch of cilantro for less than $2 USD. The flower vendor gives me a sprig of something fragrant whose name I still don't know, because she's been doing that since the second time I bought flowers from her. The juice stall makes me a fresh orange juice while I wait.
On the way home, I pass the coffee shop where remote workers are setting up their laptops, the stationery store that's been here since the 1960s, and a tiny park where two old men are already playing chess. The whole circuit takes less than an hour, costs almost nothing, and reminds me every single day why I chose this neighborhood.
What's Nearby (and How Close It Really Is)
The magic of Anzures is its location. You're in the center of everything without being in the thick of anything. Here's what I mean, in actual walking minutes from our front door:
- Polanco: 5 minutes. Cross one avenue and you're among the best restaurants, shops, and galleries in the city. The transition is seamless — you walk from a quiet residential street into one of Latin America's most polished neighborhoods.
- Museo Nacional de Antropología: 10 minutes. One of the greatest museums in the world, and I don't say that lightly. The Aztec Sun Stone alone is worth the visit, but you'll want three hours.
- Chapultepec Park: 12 minutes. Nearly 700 hectares of forest, lakes, a castle, a zoo, and some of the best running paths in the city. I go at least twice a week.
- Paseo de la Reforma: 8 minutes. The grand boulevard that runs through the city, home to the Angel of Independence and some of the best street food in Mexico City on Sunday mornings when they close it to cars.
- Roma Norte: 15 minutes by Uber. For when you want the gallery scene, the bookshops, and the mezcal bars.
I've had guests who spent their entire trip without taking a single taxi because everything they wanted was within walking distance. That's not possible from Roma, Condesa, or Coyoacán — at least not with the same range of attractions.
Who Lives Here
This matters, because a neighborhood is its people. Anzures is not a monoculture. On our block alone, there are families who have lived here for generations, a young architect who moved in last year, a retired diplomat, and a woman who runs a gallery from her living room.
The neighborhood has a significant community of Japanese and Korean residents — a legacy of the diplomatic district nearby — which means some of the best Asian food in the city is hidden on these streets. There are French families connected to the nearby Lycée, Argentine expats who opened a medialunas bakery, and Mexican families whose grandparents bought these houses when the neighborhood was new.
It's diverse in the best sense: not curated or performative, but genuinely mixed. And that diversity shows up in the food, the conversations, and the character of the streets.
Why Tourists Should Care
I understand the appeal of staying in a "known" neighborhood. When you're visiting a city for the first time, there's comfort in choosing the place that everyone recommends. But here's what you trade for that comfort: authenticity, value, and the chance to experience what daily life in Mexico City actually feels like.
In Polanco, you'll eat at restaurants designed for visitors and pay prices calibrated to foreign wallets. In Roma, you'll compete for sidewalk space with influencers and content creators. In Condesa, you'll find yourself in a beautiful bubble that feels increasingly disconnected from the city around it.
In Anzures, you'll eat at the same places your neighbors eat. You'll pay what locals pay. You'll walk streets that aren't on any tourist map and find things — a beautiful courtyard glimpsed through an open gate, a street cat who sits on the same wall every afternoon, a mural on a side street that nobody has photographed for Instagram — that belong to you alone.
And you'll still be five minutes from Polanco when you want the fancy dinner.
Mariana's Five Favorite Things to Do in Anzures
1. The morning bakery ritual
Walk to the nearest panadería, grab a metal tray and tongs, and choose your pan dulce. It's a meditative act — moving through the warm, yeast-scented air, selecting conchas, cuernos, orejas, and polvorones. Take your selection to the counter, pay almost nothing, and eat them at home with coffee. This is how Mexico City starts its day, and there's no better way to join in.
2. The market on a Saturday morning
The neighborhood market is busiest on Saturday mornings, when families come to stock up for the week. Walk through slowly. Try the fresh-squeezed juices (the green one with nopal, pineapple, and celery is better than it sounds). Buy a bag of the seasonal fruit. Stop at the cooked food section for a gordita or a quesadilla de huitlacoche. Spend $5 and leave with a bag full of the week's best produce.
3. A walk to Polanco at golden hour
Around 5 or 6pm, when the light goes amber and the jacarandas (in spring) or the liquidambars (in autumn) glow, walk from Anzures into Polanco. Cross at Campos Elíseos and stroll through the quieter residential blocks — not Masaryk, but the streets parallel to it. The architecture is stunning, the light is perfect, and the transition from quiet Anzures to polished Polanco is one of my favorite walks in the city.
4. Sunday morning on Reforma
Every Sunday, Paseo de la Reforma closes to car traffic and opens to cyclists, runners, walkers, and families. It's an eight-minute walk from Anzures, and it transforms the grand boulevard into a massive pedestrian party. Rent a bike from one of the Ecobici stations (about $0.50 for a 45-minute ride) and ride all the way to the Angel of Independence and back. Street vendors sell esquites (corn in a cup with mayo, chili, and lime) and fresh fruit. It's the most joyful thing this city does every week.
5. An evening on the terrace
Sometimes the best thing to do is nothing. Sit on a terrace or a balcony as the sun sets, listen to the birds settling into the trees, and watch the sky turn pink over the city. The noise of traffic fades. The neighborhood grows quiet. Someone is cooking something that smells incredible. You're in one of the largest cities on earth, and for a moment, it feels like a village.
The Plants
I want to end with something that might sound small but isn't. Anzures is one of the greenest neighborhoods in the city. Every balcony has something growing — bougainvillea, geraniums, succulents, herbs. Every sidewalk has a tree, and many of them are old enough that their roots have lifted the concrete. The jacarandas bloom in March and carpet the streets in purple. The liquidambars turn red in November. There are birds everywhere — hummingbirds, warblers, the occasional parrot — because there are so many flowers and so many trees.
This isn't an accident. It's the result of seventy years of residents who cared about their street, their block, their corner. Every plant you see represents a decision someone made to make their piece of the neighborhood more beautiful. That accumulates over decades into something you can feel the moment you walk in: a sense of care, of stewardship, of a neighborhood that belongs to the people who live in it.
That's Anzures. Not flashy, not famous, not on anyone's top-ten list. Just a neighborhood that has been quietly, stubbornly beautiful for seventy years, waiting for the people who are paying attention.
We were paying attention. And we chose to build Casa Caravana here because we wanted our guests to experience what we experience every day: the privilege of living in a place that doesn't need to perform for anyone. It just is what it is — a home, a community, a corner of Mexico City that the rest of the world hasn't discovered yet.
And honestly? I hope it stays that way for a while.
Planning a trip to Mexico City?
Casa Caravana has 4 boutique residences in Anzures, a 5-minute walk from Polanco. Each one is named after a grandmother and designed to feel like home.
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